Читать книгу Warbird - Jennifer Maruno - Страница 6

The next morning the mission house buzzed with activity. The voyageurs told tales of canoe races as the clerk wrote down their names.

“How did you get such a chance?” Etienne whispered wistfully.

The boy, hunched close to the fire, stared back with red-rimmed eyes. “Such a chance,” he repeated in a mocking voice. “As an orphan apprentice, it is my only chance.”

Etienne had to fight to keep the excitement from his voice. “You need a good night’s rest, away from all this,” he said. He leaned in close. “I have an idea.”

“Leave me alone,” the boy said, pushing Etienne away.

“Why don’t you come back to my farm?” Etienne suggested, tugging at the boy’s arm. “My mother is a good cook. You can sleep in my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“They won’t let me leave the mission,” the boy muttered. “I made a vow to serve God.”

“It’s only for the night,” Etienne told him. “You can meet up with them in the morning.”

Father Lejeune praised Etienne for his thoughtfulness. He agreed to wait for the boy at the fork in the road at dawn the next day.

Etienne’s socks and shirts flapped on the line as the boys approached the farm. His mother stepped away from the kitchen table to greet them, her hands covered in flour.

“Bonjour?” she said, cocking her head to one side, giving the boy a warm smile.

“Father Lejeune wants him to stay the night,” Etienne said. “Tomorrow he travels north.”

“Are your parents far away?” she asked.

The boy looked down. “They were buried at sea before we reached Kebec.”

Etienne’s mother uttered a small cry and pulled the boy to her in a floury embrace. Then she pushed him back, pulled off his stocking cap and ran her fingers through his hair.

“So pale, so thin, so tired,” she said, clicking her tongue. “You have no family here?”

The boy’s eyes glazed. “My family is the churchyard now,” he said.

“He is going to the mission of Sainte-Marie, as a donné,” Etienne explained. “He will learn a trade while helping the Fathers.” He took the boy’s cap from his mother’s hand and the drawstring sack. He placed them on the bench beside the door. On top he tossed his small tin pouch.

His mother handed Etienne a basket. “Collect the eggs,” she told Etienne. “Then the two of you have a good wash before dinner.”

“It’s seems strange,” Etienne told the boy as they headed to the chicken coop. “You don’t want to go, and I would give anything for such an adventure.”

“You wouldn’t like it there,” the boy said. He shoved open the wooden door of the coop. “The Jesuits live among the savages.”

“I know all about savages,” Etienne bragged. “I’ve helped them fish for eels.”

At dinner that night, his father hardly noticed the stranger at their table. He was too busy complaining. “I expect you to haul rocks tomorrow,” he said to Etienne. “While I felled trees, you spent the day doing nothing.”

The boy picked at the plate filled with tourtière and bread. Etienne noticed him touching his fingers to his temple. Headache, he thought.

“We are the same age,” Etienne said to his father. “Isn’t that strange?”

His father only shrugged as he chewed.

“Someone might mistake us for brothers,” Etienne said to his mother.

Marie Chouart looked from one boy to the other. Both had thick yellow hair, a splash of freckles across their noses and deep blue eyes. A look of surprise flashed across her face. “C’est vrai,” she said. She pushed the bread basket towards the boy, but he refused.

After dinner, Etienne’s father smoked his pipe on the porch while his mother tended the oven. Etienne and the boy mounted the ladder to the loft. The boy removed his clothing and curled up on the straw mattress. Etienne covered him with the quilt his mother had made.

“I can hardly bear to move my eyeballs,” the boy whispered, “my head is so bad.”

“I don’t think you should go tomorrow,” Etienne said. “You should stay behind.”

The boy moaned. “I must go,” he said turning away. “I made a vow.”

Etienne picked up the boy’s clothes. In the dark, no one will know the difference. He pulled off his own clothes, put on the boy’s and sat on the floor to wait. At the sound of the rooster, I will be up and out the door. The boy could work the farm with my father. The thought of the adventures that lay ahead made Etienne grin from ear to ear. He closed his eyes to imagine buckskins and beavers.

A weak crow came from the yard as the rooster readied to greet the sun. The creak of the farmhouse door startled Etienne fully awake. His father headed outside to use the latrine.

The boy groaned and flung off the quilt.

Etienne closed the wooden shutters and fastened them. He did not want the boy to wake up. He tucked the quilt about the boy’s neck, and waited for him to roll over and go back to sleep.

Etienne put on the boy’s coat. He raced to the bench and stuffed his hair beneath the woollen cap just as his father stepped onto the porch. Etienne turned his back, pretending to be busy with the knotted bundle his mother had left for the boy’s breakfast. His father paused, yawned and grunted. Etienne grabbed the bag and ran outside with his heart racing. He got to the road just as the rooster gave the sun a full, throaty welcome.

The sky looked like the St. Lawrence River, light with snow, dark with cold. Etienne fought his fear of the eerie shadows as he made his way to the crossroads. He waited for men with torches and the laden ox-cart to pass. Father Lejeune followed in his square cap and long black cape.

Etienne joined him, keeping his head low.

At the river bank, a man in a beaver hat waited with a rifle. The strong, kelpy smell of the St Lawrence filled Etienne’s nostrils. He pulled the cap down over his ears to keep out the damp.

“You the orphan?” the man asked.

Father Lejeune placed his hand on Etienne’s shoulder. “He is in God’s hands,” he said.

A hand shoved Etienne towards the dark river. The steep path to the river was still slippery with winter runoff. In the shadows it was hard to find footing. A man stumbled, almost knocking Etienne off his feet. When the clouds parted, the sun greeted the St. Lawrence with clear, early light. Four large canots de nord, about twenty-five feet long, with ends shaped like crescents, were moored offshore. Behind them, almost too small to see, a small birch-bark canoe rocked at the end of a pole.